Musings – coralie's contemplations in markup

Tag, you’re it!

Léonie Watson tagged me last week in her blog questions entry “tag, you’re it!”. It’s a thing that has been going on since the start of the year, I think, where people are all answering the same set of questions about their blog, and then pass the baton. I’m in good company, being tagged by Léonie, AND being tagged with Lola Odelola and Mia (Miriam Suzanne)! I’ve known Léonie for a long time (over a decade for sure), but I’ve met Mia only twice at meetings in Seville (2023) and near Los Angeles (2024), and Lola I just met once on Zoom a few months ago as we attended the same meeting. All most excellent women!

Why did you start blogging in the first place?

It all started as a joke. A prank, really. Me and a couple others at work created a parody blog on Blogger in 2006 to tease a colleague of ours who had a blog where he wrote very seriously and quite assiduously (and still does!). His blog being called “la-grange”, we called ours “& la paille” as a nod to “La grange et la paille”, a parody of an old epic show on French TV in the late 80s. We attempted to create badly whimsical, poetic or philosophical short entries and kept that up for 2 months before we lost steam. Good fun!

Meanwhile, since 2005 I was blogging for myself, as a diary. I used a local instance of Blosxom on my laptop and created entries in command line via the Terminal. Every now and then I opened them in a browser because I liked how the blog posts were adorned by a black and white blossom.

I also blogged as Barbie-dull on my friend Amy’s blog “Dullicious” between 2005 and 2008 (all of those posts have since then been added to this blog). I blogged then about things I was doing (reading, movies, dreams, what happened to me that was notable, etc.) because I was spending some time abroad in the USA, and blogging was a way to combine diary, postcards, and newsletters for me and my family and friends back home.

Today I continue to blog for myself, about things I don’t mind others seeing. Mostly things I learn, things I draw or paint, things from my kitchen or garden, tracking my progress exercising, etc. I have a truly bad or odd memory, so I find this works for me as useful references for the future.

What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it? Have you blogged on other platforms before?

Today, I use WordPress which is hosted on a storage instance that I rent from Infomaniak. I chose it because it was the only blogging application they offered when I looked. I hate it. I wish I were more knowledgeable technically so I could do without.

I blogged on wordpress.com before, on MyOpera, I used Blosxom, Blogger. For work, I blog on CraftCMS since June 2023. We previously used Movable Type until September 2013, then self-hosted WordPress until June 2023. I micro-blogged on Diaspora, Identi.ca, Twitter (which I left before it became X), Mastodon (still do).

screen shot of a My Opera blog — Screenshot of my My Opera blog

Screen shot of a WordPress.com blog — Screenshot of my My Opera blog

How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that’s part of your blog?

In a panel/dashboard that is part of the blog. I used to use the Jetpack mobile application which was pretty convenient both on iPhone and iPad, but it has stopped working at some point and does not let me add any media anymore. Now I added a shortcut to the blog Dashboard to the home screens and use that. But the user experience has further degraded because the input focus disappears for no apparent reason at some point, requiring me to save the entry and reload the page. It’s a mild bother, really, since I blog less than once a month.

When do you feel most inspired to write?

Inspiration strikes any time. But I usually write during weekends, as the rest of the time it’s not convenient because I’m too tired from work, from being a mom, or from exercising, or “all of the above”! So when I am inspired, I open a draft blog post and write the title to continue later.

Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?

Immediately.

Who are you writing for?

I write for myself, mostly. I do it in a way that I would not be ashamed if others read. That gives me both accountability and a sense of purpose.

What are you generally interested in writing about?

I would love to be an influential writer who has deep thoughts and can eloquently make points that are powerful and enlightening, and move the needle in important and meaningful areas. But in practice, I write about my pets, I document step-by-step some of my drawings and paintings, I post recipes, I collect quotes from books I read, or I write up on things I learn or care about that I may want to (and usually do) refer back to later.

What’s your favourite post on your blog?

This post is the 500th! in a blog that spans 2005-2025. It’s hard to pick one so I’m going to go for the one that tells an usual story: Grazie, Signore Poggi, where I knocked at the door of an Italian couple in a hotel while they were having an intimate moment, to retrieve outside their window the cigarettes I had clumsily dropped 2 stories above.

Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?

Every two or so years I wonder whether to keep the damn thing and I do, but grudgingly. So maybe one day I’ll finally look for someone to hire to help me figure out a setup that I like and can manage happily. Maybe that extends to the rest of my website as well, which is even older than this blog!

Next?

I would like to pass the baton to:

Kevin Lawver, who is an inspiring wise man who’s had many lives, and always has good thoughts and ideas.

Architecting

I realized this week that I seem to have a lot more interest in architecting than in execution.

I also remembered that we become different persons based on what happens to us or the choices we have, even based on how good or bad we feel. Change may occur gradually after a long time or repeatedly on a much smaller scale. I just know it happens, to all of us, and that it is more or less perceptible (to us, to others). We are not exactly who and how we were at some point, and it makes it challenging to plan or to predict reactions (ours, other’s), but after all, isn’t it a more interesting this way?

Although I feel exactly the same, I am no longer the same person I was the last time I asked myself what I liked doing. So when I didn’t understand why I wasn’t approaching anymore things the way I used to, why some things had become unattractive to me, I got more and more worried and blamed it on not having enough time, not prioritizing the right way, or being unqualified.

Then a few things happened.

First, I had a great time when I focused on building a list and qualifying why its elements mattered individually and made sense as a whole, but it was not that pleasant a few days after to sit (thankfully for a short time) with a group that was fleshing out and categorizing the list. Worse, the only part I enjoyed was observing the deftness of the meeting convener at turning input that was sometimes diverging into something concrete. I wondered what was wrong with me to even feel the way I did (frustrated at times of some people’s carelessness, bored at other times by the pointlessness of some of the input, awed by the patience of the Chair, and puzzled that others seemed to be having such a great time.)

Second, I set aside some time to make a dent in a part of my TODO that I have kept bumping down for over a month, only to witness myself not being able to make anything of everything about it that was in my brain. If only there was a button I could press to process everything. I was unable to make myself go through the exercise and it was a source of much disappointment and of course worry. Where did my abilities go? Why the block? Welp.

Today it seems I prefer to conceive and design future implementations than to put things together and execute. From the event celebrating 30th anniversary of W3C last year to the various projects and conversations I am involved in this year, it’s clear that I choose to set the tone and direction, impress key principles, assign certain people, make specific connections, monitor promising angles, and track that the course is as plotted.

I have a keen notion of where I want to lead my small team and how to best use our collective skills and inclinations. Therefore I became more assertive over the years, the more it looked like we were doing OK, then doing alright. There is positive reinforcement in approaching things cautiously and in a way to be able to adapt nimbly. Tomorrow is exactly the 10th anniversary of my appointment as head of the W3C marketing and communications team. What changed though is that in some cases I discover I have a really hard time executing, to the extent that I am unable to remember how to.

Flickr stats: me wins, my photos lose, meh

Screenshot of the Flickr app showing the all-time views, the 1st photo has had over 124K, 2nd 45K, 3rd 36K, 4th 30K, 5th 28K. All but the 4th are photos picturing me.

What my top-five most viewed photos tell me is that I should have been a model in my early thirties rather than a wannabe photographer.

I have been using Flickr since 2005.

Well, I have not used it for several years now, and I think I just understood why:

The most viewed photos are almost entirely pictures I posted that picture me. They are part of the story I told about me on this platform, but they are not photos I took. (Although I did a series of self portraits in a dusty mirror which are of me, by me.)

But I don’t use the platform to show myself (that’s what Instagram is about, right? And I left that one already), as much as to showcase my photography at the same time as I photo-document bits of my life.

The only photo where I am not, among the top five, is a byproduct of its title being the same as swingers club (a coincidence, which I blogged about in 2006 when I figured out why it was my most popular photo.)

I think I will find out how much longer the pro membership I paid is, and find an exit strategy for all of my photos on this platform. There is appetite for how I was about 10 years ago more than there is appetite for the stuff I want to show, much to my dismay.

Work won’t love you back

2022-08-03 Update: reflected that the transition to a legal entity was postponed by a year; gave link to media advisory of that transition; rewrote two phrases.

Abstract of what is on my mind: work is transactional by nature, excellent connections with coworkers are precious (I am fortunate to have many). Now, the companies that consider their work force “family” puzzle me. This is not exactly the case where I work (or is it?), BUT we are in a setting that is pretty conducive to it, AND after 27 years, this is going to change –in less than ~~a year~~ two years. SO I really wonder what that change will do to the current equilibrium (I’m pretty sure it’s going to put it to the test).

Screenshot of a Tweet by Kevin pointing out that work won’t love you back

This stemmed from my browsing The Twitters yesterday. I read Kevin‘s tweet.

He wrote ““work won’t love you back.” And as much as I’ve loved the people I’ve worked with, it’s always turned to be correct.“

Screenshot of the The tweets that Kevin quoted, referring to work as family but also as being a transaction

Kevin was quoting another Twitter thread where I read “it’s so emotionally damaging when companies self-style their workers as ‘family’. you can have deep emotional connections with your coworkers, if you’re lucky, but don’t forget that work relationships are fundamentally transactional. i hope your family is not.“

I don’t consider my workplace to be like family and we aren’t self-styled as such either. But, work is very central in my life: every other week I spend most of my waking time at work (the other week, I am solo parent of a teenager, spending just normal amounts of time at work).

Firstly, I am fortunate to have very deep emotional connections with many of my coworkers, a few of which I even regard as ~~father~~ parent figures, many of which are true models for me, most of which I respect tremendously.

Secondly, we have very little turnover. I’ve worked there for over 22 years and many current colleagues were already in the team when I joined. And we welcome newcomers, not as siblings, but with similar care and attention to their success. As though we have a stake in it –and we do, yes.

Thirdly, we get together (we used to, pre-COVID at least) every now and then and those occasions are always enjoyable and looked forward to by most. Yes, like any other workplaces, there are difficult people who get along with fewer people, or are not interested in making any connections at all. That’s my description of our unusual work environment. In fact, I remember how I described it to my mum a few years into it: it’s like summer camp where you make new great friends and do exciting stuff, but it’s all year-round.

Now, our administrative setup allows us to do our work without a whole lot of competition, without too many frustrations, because we are employed by four different institutions that legally “host” our consortium, and in most of our cases, the people who employ us are not those we take work orders from. I think that makes a world of a difference.

Change is coming. The Hosts arrangement, in place from the start in 1994, has enough drawbacks that for a few years now we have been exploring how to become our own legal entity. This is set to happen on January 1, ~~202~~2 2023. When it does, the consortium will have its own bank account, legal and fiduciary obligations, and traditional management powers that we currently do not fully have.

The dynamics are bound to change. While today I (and many others in the team) are moved by the sheer impact our work has on society (HTML –heard of it? CSS, Web accessibility, Internationalization, etc. We are the little known consortium that makes the Web work, for everyone) and the Hosts that employ us provide the best abstraction to shield us from the reality of the transactional nature of work, this ~~is going~~ has the potential to hit us in the face like the train crashing Dr. Woodward’s truck in the movie Super 8!

There is a lot on our plates and most of us overwork because it’s really worth it! I remind myself on occasion that work won’t love me back, but once we are truly as valuable as our ability to make the company money, I wonder how the care will fare.